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Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

nytimes.com

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Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#351

Post by mirimir »

ljf wrote: post #168
mirimir wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. From what I've read, it seems like the most effective strategy would be locking down elder care homes tightly. And also tightly locking down staff at elder care homes. Because once one resident gets infected, there's no way to prevent other residents, and staff who care for them, from getting infected. At least, short of staff wearing ebola level protection, and changing between residents. Which would be impos…

Don't forget that deaths are just one measure of the damage covid brings. My wife is/was a fit and healthy 40yo no underlying conditions - she had covid 4 months ago and has barely been able to climb the stairs some days. The 'crazy' thing is that her actual covid infection wasn't hat bad and she had no shortness of breath etc at the time. But here she is with symptoms very like ME some 100+ days later. Obviously tha…

Sorry :(

Maybe she carries that susceptibility sequence from Neanderthals. It'd also be good to focus on isolating people with that and other relevant genetic markers.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#353

Post by tomerico »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #236
makomk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It's pretty obvious at this point that a general lockdown is worthless as a replacement for locking down care homes specifically - Spain had one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe but massively screwed up their handling of their care homes, and ended up with an even worse per-capital death toll than Sweden. Unfortunately, mainstream media publications have been spinning this instead as evidence that herd immu…

> It's pretty obvious at this point that a general lockdown is worthless as a replacement for locking down care homes specifically New Zealander here, our general lockdown went very well and enabled us to isolate clusters of transmission and prevent it becoming community transmission. While two of our clusters were rest homes, several others were not - a school, a St Patrick's Day celebration at a pub, and a wedding,…

New Zealand is a special case where it may be feasible to isolate yourself from the rest of the world and reach zero cases. With that said, it remains to be seen that it is possible to maintain zero community spread over the long term, and whether the economic impact of isolating yourself from the rest of the world is worth it.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#354

Post by arcticbull »

ncallaway wrote: post #110
nradov wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the criteria for defining an acceptable number of deaths?

I would generally go for "as few as possible given the circumstances". Given how much higher they are over other nations—even taking into account excess deaths—I would say they have failed that metric.

You cannot know that until after the pandemic is over.

The Swedes are betting that nobody in the world will be spared from COVID and therefore the delta in deaths is temporary. They are front-loading it while attempting to keep the economic impacts as low as possible. They anticipate the rest of the world will be contending with shutdowns, re-openings, shutdowns, re-openings, and when all is said and done, the death rate per capita will be the same the world over.

So far, they the Swedes have bet one way, much of the rest of the world has bet the other way. Time will tell, but it is much too soon to make that judgment today.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#355

Post by TMWNN »

whoisthemachine wrote: post #326
jlmorton wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Containing and minimizing the effects of a pandemic is just one aspect of what we might call a civilized attitude towards human life. Conversely, not doing so is uncivilized and I might add immoral and irresponsible. The reality is that everyone is prepared to allow others to die for their own convenience. I intentionally phrased that harshly, but it is indisputably true. In the US, 70,000 people died from the infl…

It has much less to do with people dying directly from Covid and more to do with the sheer number of severe Covid cases overloading healthcare systems to the point that patients with other serious conditions can't receive medical treatment. This occurred in Italy, New York City, etc., and is now being seen in some cities in Texas and Florida. This condition is what incentivizes societies to lock down, not just the me…

>This occurred in Italy, New York City, etc., and is now being seen in some cities in Texas and Florida.

Not Florida. An article from yesterday (https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2020/06/18/florida-has-l...) ominously claims that "less than 25%" of ICU beds are available in the state, but actually read it and see that 90% occupancy rates are normal, and only a few of those in the ICU are COVID19 cases.

Texas? Let's look at Houston, where for a month it's been "we'll be running out of ICU beds in two weeks" every week.

Italian and New York hospitals were overwhelmed because a) both places put sick elderly into old age homes. b) Like elsewhere early on, doctors put everyone serious onto ventilators in a mistaken belief that they should treat patients like they do ARDS cases based on blood oxygen levels. This damaged healthy lung sacs and caused long-term dependence on mechanical respiration that doctors found almost impossible to wean patients from, and other side effects like deep vein thrombosis; Nick Cordero is a recent example. This article from three months ago (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...) was completely vindicated in retrospect.

(And even NYC being overwhelmed was thankfully temporary. That's why the military hospital ship sent there was not used.)

The mean time between symptoms and death is 14 days (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...). 99% of cases where people with COVID19 stay in the hospital for months is because of b), and neither a) nor b) is happening now.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#356

Post by jeffbee »

claudeganon wrote: post #346
jeffbee wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also just not having any initial sick people and closing the airports works great. Your "at the same time" statement is off by a few days and off by a few days makes a huge difference in outbreak severity. That's why you need to keep in mind that small numbers of infected people and seemingly short time intervals change the result radically.

Do you honestly believe the difference between South Korea and the US’ outcomes is those few days? The difference in response on any dimension between the two countries, from their testing to contract tracing to on-demand hospital expansions is so staggering as to make this claim absurd. I’m not sure what you’re talking about with airports. South Korea has had less incoming travel restrictions than the US.

I was referring to New Zealand. I don't think comparing SK to USA is nonsense but I do think comparing Sweden to China or New Zealand to USA is complete nonsense. If anyone feels compelled to do so they need to realize they are cherry-picking and compare NZ to Utah instead.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#357

Post by TMWNN »

tomerico wrote: post #353
EdwardDiego wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty obvious at this point that a general lockdown is worthless as a replacement for locking down care homes specifically New Zealander here, our general lockdown went very well and enabled us to isolate clusters of transmission and prevent it becoming community transmission. While two of our clusters were rest homes, several others were not - a school, a St Patrick's Day celebration at a pub, and a wedding,…

New Zealand is a special case where it may be feasible to isolate yourself from the rest of the world and reach zero cases. With that said, it remains to be seen that it is possible to maintain zero community spread over the long term, and whether the economic impact of isolating yourself from the rest of the world is worth it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/hlmo1q/new_zeal...

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#358

Post by mlyle »

GuB-42 wrote: post #287
bjourne wrote: post #68

You have to look at the excess deaths figures. That is, how many usually dies from January to June in a normal year and compare that to how many extra that died in 2020. For Sweden the excess deaths almost exactly matches the number of Covid deaths, give or take 10%. That is not the case for many other countries. For example, the UK had almost twice the number of excess deaths as Covid deaths in a few weeks in April.…

There is excess mortality in Sweden https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ It is not the highest in Europe but it is very noticeable. In contrast, the surrounding countries of Finland, Norway and Denmark show almost nothing. As for which figures to take, we don't know, they are all wrong. Each country has a different way of counting depending on what they think is important. For example hospital deaths are very con…

Read the comment and reply to what he said, not what you thought he said.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#359

Post by TMWNN »

sjg007 wrote: post #102
microtherion wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a large proportion of the deaths were in care homes … which is no different from other countries. I seem to recall articles comparing the numbers, and the proportions seem similar in many places. > Also, what will count is not the first few months but the entire lifetime of this pandemic. Considering only the improvements in treatments made between March and now, it seems fairly evident that a strategy of front-loa…

There’s been no real progress in clinical treatment since March.

No longer putting everyone with a It's heartbreaking to read this article from three months ago (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...) and realize that everything those warning against overuse of ventilators turned out to be correct.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#360

Post by volume »

bjourne wrote: post #68

You have to look at the excess deaths figures. That is, how many usually dies from January to June in a normal year and compare that to how many extra that died in 2020. For Sweden the excess deaths almost exactly matches the number of Covid deaths, give or take 10%. That is not the case for many other countries. For example, the UK had almost twice the number of excess deaths as Covid deaths in a few weeks in April.…

> In other words, comparing countries by their Covid deaths/capita rates is meaningless. The statistics are likely completely wrong because different countries use different definitions of "Covid deaths" and different reporting procedures.

Sounds a lot like comparing sprint velocities between engineering groups.

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